Can some ultra-geek figure out the perfect score? (what's BOFH, chris?) I'm a designer and reluctant nerd who needs to know how my computers work in order to stay in business, but I did scare myself when I knew that Bluetooth was a Viking. I know I must have gotten 5-10 questions wrong tho ...

Answering honestly I got 219. Then I saw all the Microsoft flash ads all over the page and realized what it was and re-took it and scored 234. [Hint: click YES to any feature of Windows XP and Office XP and newer and you too will score high.] Some of the heuristics seemed, though normal for a tech-savvy person, strange for the average user. Like not gaining points for alphanumeric passwords or not having anyone's name/dob as password, but losing points if it weren't the case. Same for opeing file attachments from strangers. No points if you don't, but losing points if you do. I wonder why they gave points for writing a virus. Same for blogging and googling.

Major problems with this. The biggest problem is that you can't select more than one answer to a question like "Do you read your personal e-mail at home or at work?" Well duh -- both! The fact that the UI element used for this is a checkbox leads you to believe that you can select multiple answers.

But I abandoned the test when I saw they knock 5 points off for opening files sent to you by people you don't know. This is basically harmless on a Mac, which is why I do it, and in any case they didn't say what kinds of attachments. (I wouldn't open an executable.) I should get 5 points added for using a platform nobody writes worms for, rather than having 5 points knocked off because they assume I'm using Windows.

On the other hand, I got 5 points because my OS has a firewall built-in. I don't use the firewall, since there's really no need to, but I do have one, which is what they actually asked. So I guess it's a wash.

I got a 210 the first time I took it, and answered honestly (Using Wintel at work helped a good bit). Second time I got a 240. It is a pretty poorly designed survey.... Doesn't even record the actual scores, the only record keeping is a second form that's highest number is 110. Why not just submit the score after the survey is taken?

One thing I don't get is why I didn't get extra points for *not* having my homepage set to msn/yahoo/aol. My homepage is a home-brewn, dynamically generated php page with rss feeds from my friends blogs, webradio, search fields and the likes. I tought I should get nerd points for that. Anyway, I got 205. I'm a nerd. Yeah

Well, it looks like the highest score possible is a 240. They actually got one of their answers wrong: they give you points for saying that Mac files can be read and written in Windows and vv, but they seem to have forgotten the fact that Mac files have a resource fork and a data fork; if you pass a Mac file around a win or unix network, it's quite likely that the file you get back won't be the one you sent out.

Aside from Pierce, I think I tanked out with a 78. This is definitely skewed results, though, based on the fact that it's an internet test. Obviously more people who are tech-savvy are going to use than internet than those who don't. Also, I'm in agreement on the PC/Mac thing. I can use a PC but have used Macs since age five, so who cares if I know how to get rid of Clippy? My OS doesn't treat me like a 3-year-old.

141 on 1st try which ain't not too bad for a 48+ English guy who lives in the scorching northern US-of-A!! Searched MSNBC site in vain (digital iq test) for this d*mned quiz after spotting commercial (Newsweek rag) -- went after it on Copernic...Kottke's blog pages popped up as #8 (of dozens) which led me here...FYI, try Google which quickly pops up several pages (as usual) with a preferred link to an "Einstein" IQ test which may be a chuckle!!

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This thread is closed to new comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.